CHARLES ETHAN PORTER (1847 - 1923) Overturned Basket of Apples.
Oil on canvas, circa 1885. 508x610 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired at Winter Auctions, Plainville, CT, September 12, 2011; private New York collection.
This is a large and unusual example of Porter's series of apple still lifes, which was painted during his later, second period in Hartford, CT. This oil is very similar in the impastoed handling, contrasts and casual naturalness of Apples in an Overturned Basket, circa 1885, exhibited at the artist's 2007 New Britain Museum retrospective. The artist, according to Hildegard Cummings, considered one of his apple paintings his best work and showed it in the National Academy of Design in 1885--unfortunately, the available records do not confirm which depiction of apples he referred to. Cummings pp. 74-75.
